The End is the Beginning

Life after Sonic Youth, Brad Rose's the North Sea, Dag Rosenqvist's Jasper TX, and a fresh light on elusive German collective P16.D4

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III. Jasper TX: Over and onward

Don't be fooled by the title of An Index of Failure: The new album from the Swedish sound architect known as Jasper TX is a gorgeous work, comprising five pieces that explore the fertile borderlands between noise and harmony, between the beautiful and the brutal. "In All Your Blinding Lights" stretches falsetto vocals beneath a dense electronic haze, an essence trapped somewhere between bloom and decay. The 13-minute closer, "Days Above the Tide", slowly obfuscates its simple acoustic guitar melody-- a few notes, then silence-- with a rising roar, a solitary drum pounding out a war march in the distance. Tones saturate the space until it seems as if the track can hold no more music. Even at its most aggressive, it's still magnetically pretty.

But "Days Above the Tide" also signals the end of Jasper TX, the longtime moniker of Gothenburg's Dag Rosenqvist. Built from bits of songs he'd given up on for one reason or another, An Index of Failure serves as a posthumous endnote to the project. Though Rosenqvist doesn't consider it a proper album, its sense of timing and sequencing afford these 40 minutes the same bravado and magnetism as his previous works. After a few difficult years that involved finishing his best work to date, a divorce with his wife, and a bout of writer's block, Rosenqvist is ending Jasper TX to give himself a new start.

"One of the reasons why I've never made this into a career is because I don't want to have to adjust or compromise. I can do whatever I want."

After playing in a series of rock bands, Rosenqvist founded Jasper TX as an isolationist attempt to make the music he wanted to hear, rather than that of an arbitrary ensemble built through democratic concessions. He succeeded, too, creating a series of albums that couched pedestrian field recordings, direct melodies, and intriguing samples in mesmerizing storms of sound. On two of his best LPs, 2009's Singing Stones and 2011's The Black Sun Transmissions, Rosenqvist landed comfortably between the moody stable of experimentalists at Touch Records and the melodic melancholy of American post-rock acts like Balmorhea and Explosions in the Sky. Jasper TX gave grandiosity a much-needed edge.

We spoke with Rosenqvist from his home in Gothenburg about the end of Jasper TX, his fascination with collaborations and his love of Neurosis.

Pitchfork: In one 2009 interview, you seemed so excited about making new music that you said, "I'll probably end up turning into a psychotic bureaucrat making minimal harsh noise." But now you're ending Jasper TX after more than a decade. Has that intensity diminished?

Dag Rosenqvist: There is still this massive surge of ideas and things I want to accomplish, but the pace of what I've been doing has slowed down a bit. I get really, really obsessive about it, almost compulsive. I started realizing that this wasn't helping the music because, to some extent, I really wasn't analyzing what I was doing. I was just making stuff in a surge of, "I need to get this done." Dealing with concepts has been much more important to me. I get an idea or a concept for an album, and then I work really hard at getting to the core of that concept. That has slowed down the process and made me reflect with myself a lot.

Pitchfork: Jasper TX was such an interesting name because it was taken from the site of a heinous 1988 murder of a black man by three white supremacists in Texas. It served as a fascinating introduction to the music. Why give up that handle?

DR: When I started the project, I was really political charged. It was a bit of a political statement that, right away, grew into a very personal statement. The name just followed. With The Black Sun Transmissions, I felt that I poured it all into that. It felt like a complete end point in a way. I wondered if it would be the last Jasper TX album or the first Dag Rosenqvist album, and I decided to make it the last proper Jasper TX album. It felt like a good way to close it, given the massive effort that I put into that. It was a draining process, and I think that's why I suffered writer's block as well. It takes every idea you have and pours it into this big sonic statement.

"I had closed the book on something, and I wanted to start fresh, to make something that feels back-to-basics. We're doing it small-scale, with a black-and-white cover and an almost punk attitude."

I could move on at my own tempo and pace. It's not that people were shouting to me to release records, but I wanted to regroup and think about what I want to do for myself and for collaborations. It made sense to close the book with The Black Sun Transmissions and get the final chapter out now with this collection of bits and pieces, An Index of Failure.

Pitchfork: If you worked within a more popular, less esoteric genre, suddenly changing your name might seem scary because you'd lose the "brand" you've created. Is relative obscurity liberating in that way?

DR: One of the reasons why I've never made this into a career is because I don't want to have to adjust or compromise. I can do whatever I want. I'm a big music fan. I like Neurosis; I love them. But I also like Nick Drake and Bruce Springsteen. I want to pursue different aesthetics in music, because, if I just stick to one thing, I won't see the point of doing it anymore. Sometimes people will say, "Oh, this record is so different than your last one." Yeah, I don't want to repeat myself.

When I do collaborations, I want it to be something else. I suppose I do want people to hear it's me and for it to have my qualities, but I want to try and bring something different. I've been using, not rules, but guidelines for collaborations: "I'm just going to use this acoustic instrument or really processed sounds or only synthesizers." I can release something myself or only digitally for the fun of doing it, to express things and try out ideas.

"When you're in your early 20s, you're dead stubborn-- "I'm right, I'm right." But now I can reflect a little more, put the ego aside."

Pitchfork: On your blog, you mentioned a period of intense writer's block a little less than two years ago. You've since separated from your wife and ended a longtime band, but have you overcome that writer's block?

DR: To some extent, I have. The writer's block afflicted me after I was done with the recording of The Black Sun Transmission, so what I have done in regard to getting over it is collaborating with lots of people. That opens up another space in your head. You get another focus and shift from the very self-obsessive and compulsive. But I have relapsed a bit since then. It's been a bit of a personally struggling year last year.

I finished a solo album-- well, I think I finished it, at least. It's going to be under my own name. I've been talking to the Fang Bomb label that released my last two albums before An Index of Failure about doing something. When it came to the end of Jasper TX, I had closed the book on something, and I wanted to start fresh. I wanted to make something that feels back-to-basics. We're doing it small-scale, with a black-and-white cover and an almost punk or hardcore attitude.

Pitchfork: Do you feel like this solo work is a big stylistic departure from Jasper TX, or is it mostly a new name?

DR: I've taken it to more extremes. I've been using a lot of tape and tape manipulation. The sound is a bit more skewed. I'm also playing around a bit with big drums. One of my favorite bands ever is Neurosis. I'm not trying to be Neurosis, but I'm trying to do something in the same vein as their state of mind, I guess, which is not entirely well.

Pitchfork: Your work often incorporates field recordings and samples as part of a larger sound set. Do these found sounds inspire the pieces themselves, or do you go looking for them when they're needed?

DR: With field recordings, I generally bring a stereo recorder when I go somewhere where I feel that I want to get something done. But it has to be just right for the track that you're going to have it in. It's hard to describe what is right and why: It's the quality of the sound. It doesn't have to be the actual event. With samples, you generally know that something is missing. You start searching and throw everything you have into the mix to find the nuance you are looking for. But that could be a sample or a field recording or me snoring-- whatever fits together.

Pitchfork: Jasper TX was a project borne of intentional isolation. It took many years for you to begin collaborating with others, but you've been busy with it lately. What interests you more about it now?

DR: The reason why I started this project was because I played in a lot of bands in the city I grew up in, and I never felt really comfortable with it. It's always a compromise. You have to adjust to the overall idea of "This is best for the song," even if you don't always agree.

When I moved to Gothenburg, I decided I wanted to do something by myself. It took me, like, five years just to get something out there that I was pleased with. As soon as I started that, I wanted to do it for myself. Where can I push this? I'm not a skilled musician in the sense of the way. I can play guitar, and I can play synthesizers. I used to study double bass. But I've never been into playing properly. I want to create sound, and I want to get the images you have in your head into something you can listen to. I wanted to create my own kind of thing. It's ego, too: You want to prove to yourself that you can actually do it.

Once I felt I knew what I was doing, I wanted to try and see how I can do what I like in relation to another person or musician or a sound sculptor or whatever they call themselves.

Pitchfork: Now that you've developed a style and a repertoire, do you feel more confident asserting yourself in a collaboration?

DR: The strange cliché is that the older you get, the more humble you get. When you're in your early 20s, you're dead stubborn-- "I'm right, I'm right." But now I can reflect a little more, put the ego aside and say, "OK, is this beneficial for the track? Then it has to be this sound." It's a good way of learning to communicate with music.

Pitchfork: You mentioned images as they relate to your music. Do you generally create sounds inspired by or linked to images, or do the sounds you make later conjure or suggest images for you?

DR: For Singing Stones and Black Sun Transmissions, both started with just an image in my mind. That image became a narrative. There is a strong narrative in both those albums. I thought about it like a book, where you have this event, and that event is followed by that event and that event is followed by that event. And all of these events have images and textures and colors attached to them. It's really time-consuming because it can be an amazing thing that you create, but it's not right for that album or that track. Most of the time, you just delete it, because you have to start over and find the right nuance and color. The images are first, and then I build on those with sounds.

"The title of the album, An Index of Failure, felt ironic in a way because they were failed attempts, but I am really proud of them. Then again, I am never fully pleased with anything."

Pitchfork: In doing that, do you ever need to compromise parts of the story to make an album that sounds and flows better?

DR: I always try and stick to the way I feel about a situation or a person. I'd rather compromise with the sound than the story. Sometimes, you do want to build a big musical outgrowth, but it's not the theme. The images and the stories are the ones dictating where I take the track and the structure.

Pitchfork: An Index of Failure didn't stem from a narrative, but it does move through a steady arc and feels like it was put together with the same care and sense of order as older Jasper TX albums. Was it a challenge to make these bits and piece fit that aesthetic?

DR: For me, the narrative wasn't important for this one because there was no narrative. But these are the tracks I kept, though there's so much music I have thrown away because it didn't match what I thought was good. But these tracks kept coming back. I had them in my head and would listen to them off and on. I wanted to do something with them, but I wanted to create something that would function as an album instead of a collection of bits and pieces-- something that had a pull.

The title of the album, An Index of Failure, felt ironic in a way because they were failed attempts, but I am really proud of them. Then again, I am never fully pleased with anything. All of my albums will be failures in one way or another. This was a nice way to tie them all together. -- Grayson Currin